Broccoli Plus Chloroquine Prevents Prostate Cancer

Strange combinations sometimes have excellent results, and that appears to be the case in research conducted at the University of Pittsburgh, where scientists have found that combining sulforaphane, the phytochemical found in cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, with chloroquine, a drug used to prevent malaria, greatly reduced the chances of getting prostate cancer. OK, the research was done using mice, but scientists believe the same combination may work the same wonder with people. A University of Pittsburgh news release reports that when scientists tested sulforaphane in the lab, they found it works to prevent early-stage prostate cancer, but not late-stage. The researchers hypothesized that this was due to a cellular mechanism called autophagy, which limits the ability of drugs to destroy cancer. Because they knew that chloroquine inhibits autophagy, they gave chloroquine and sulforaphane to mice which were predisposed to prostate cancer, and only 12 percent of the mice developed late-stage prostate cancer, compared to half in the control group. Read more from the University of Pittsburgh.